Falling for My Elite Rival

CHAPTER FIVE

Classroom 4B is on the second floor of the academic wing, tucked into a corner that most students forget exists. It was supposed to be a storage room, but someone half-heartedly converted it into overflow classroom space years ago. The result is a small, oddly-shaped room with mismatched desks, a whiteboard that squeaks when you write on it, and a single window that overlooks the soccer fields.

No one ever uses it after school, which is probably why Coach Martinez designated it as the Academic Decathlon partnership meeting space.

I arrive at 3:28 PM, giving myself a two-minute buffer to settle in before Enzo shows up.

Except he's already there.

He's sitting at one of the desks near the window, his backpack on the floor beside him, a notebook open in front of him. The afternoon light slants through the window, catching in his dark hair and turning those green-hazel eyes almost golden.

He looks up when I enter. "You're early."

"So are you."

"I'm always early." He gestures to the desk across from him. "Habit from my father. 'If you're on time, you're late,' and all that."

I take the seat, pulling out my own notebook and the Academic Decathlon practice materials Coach distributed last week. "That sounds exhausting."

"It is." He says it casually, but there's something underneath. "But you get used to it. Performing for parents, I mean."

The phrase strikes me as odd. "Performing?"

Enzo looks like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it. "Never mind. We should probably start. Coach wants us to review the new competition format and figure out our strategy."

He's deflecting, changing the subject. I recognize the tactic because I use it constantly—redirect before anyone gets too close to something real.

I let it go. For now.

"Okay. So the state championship has individual rounds and paired rounds. We've both done individual before, but the partnership format is new this year."

"Right." Enzo pulls out his laptop, opening a document. "I looked at the scoring breakdown. Paired rounds are worth forty percent of the total team score. If we don't work well together, it tanks the whole team's chances."

"No pressure."

The corner of his mouth lifts. "We work well together. Friday night proved that."

The reference to Friday night creates a strange tension in the air. We haven't really talked about it—what it meant that he helped me, why he did it, what changes between academic rivals when one saves the other from disaster.

"About Friday—" I start.

"Coach sent a practice question set." Enzo turns his laptop toward me, and I realize he's avoiding this conversation too. "We should run through a few rounds. Get used to each other's rhythm."

He's right. We're here to practice, not to process complicated feelings about presentations and sabotage and the weird chemistry that's apparently developing between us.

I nod. "Okay. How do we do this?"

"Partnership rounds work like regular Academic Decathlon, but we can confer before answering. The key is knowing each other's strengths so we can divide questions efficiently." He pulls up the first practice question. "Literature. 'In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the narrative technique of stream of consciousness primarily serves to—'"

"Reveal the interior emotional lives of characters across different social classes while critiquing post-war British society," I answer immediately.

Enzo blinks. "That was fast."

"I read it last summer. Loved it. Woolf's whole thing is breaking down the barriers between internal and external reality, showing how consciousness flows across boundaries of class and gender and—" I stop. "Sorry. I get intense about modernist literature."

"Don't apologize. That's exactly what we need—immediate recall on your strength subjects." He makes a note. "Literature is definitely your territory. What about science?"

"Depends. Biology and chemistry, I'm solid. Physics gets complicated."

"Physics is my strongest science. I can take those." He pulls up another question. "Mathematics. 'If f(x) = 3x² - 7x + 2, find the vertex of the parabola.'"

I grab scratch paper, working through the formula. "Vertex is at (7/6, -25/12)."

Enzo checks his answer key. "Correct. Fast, too."

"Math is pattern recognition. Once you see the pattern, it's just execution." I glance at his notes. "What about you? Strengths?"

"History, economics, physics. Literature is decent but not my best. Art history is weak."

"Art history is one of my strongest." I'm starting to see how this could work. Our strengths complement each other almost perfectly. "We could actually be really good at this."

"We could dominate," Enzo corrects. "If we figure out the communication system."

We spend the next hour running practice questions, developing a rhythm. I learn that Enzo thinks out loud, processing complex problems by talking through them. He learns that I need to write things down, that seeing the information helps me organize my thoughts.

We develop hand signals—a quick nod means "I've got this," a head shake means "not sure," a specific gesture means "confer before answering."

By 4:30, we've run through three full practice rounds and our accuracy rate is ninety-four percent.

"That's higher than most individual competitors score," Enzo says, reviewing our results. "Coach is going to be thrilled."

"We're still weak on the art history questions."

"You're weak on art history. I'm basically useless." He closes his laptop. "We should probably study that together. Maybe the museum downtown? They have a permanent collection that covers most of the periods that show up in competition."

The suggestion catches me off guard. "Together? Like, outside of school?"

"Well, yeah. If we're going to win state championship, we need to cover our weak areas. And studying at a museum makes more sense than looking at slides in a classroom."

He's right. It's logical, strategic, the smart thing to do.

So why does the idea of spending a Saturday afternoon at a museum with Enzo Tavares make my stomach flip?

"Okay," I hear myself say. "When?"

"This Saturday? I can pick you up around ten, we spend a few hours at the museum, grab lunch, call it a study session."

"You don't have to pick me up. I can take the bus—"

"Mara." He says my name firmly. "Let me pick you up. It's a forty-five-minute bus ride versus a fifteen-minute drive. That's an extra hour we could spend actually studying."

The practicality of the argument makes it hard to refuse. And the way he says my name—casual but intentional, like he's thought about it before—does something to my resolve.

"Fine. But I'm buying my own lunch."

"Deal." He pulls out his phone. "What's your address?"

I hesitate. My apartment building is nothing like the neighborhood where Enzo probably lives. It's small, old, in a part of town that Westbridge students don't usually visit.

But he's waiting, and I can't think of a good reason to refuse without explaining that I'm embarrassed about where I live, which would be admitting more than I want to.

I give him the address. He enters it into his phone without reaction, without judgment.

"Got it. Ten AM Saturday." He starts packing up his materials. "Same time next week for practice?"

"Yeah. Monday, Wednesday, Friday until state championship."

"Looking forward to it." He pauses at the door. "You were right, by the way."

"About what?"

"That we're not enemies. Competitors, not enemies." His eyes meet mine. "I like this better. Working together instead of just trying to beat each other."

"Me too," I admit.

He smiles—that real smile, not the polite social one—and leaves.

I sit in the empty classroom for a few minutes after he's gone, trying to process what just happened.

Enzo Tavares just asked me to spend Saturday together. For studying, yes. For legitimate academic reasons, absolutely.

But still.

My phone buzzes. A text from Tally.

Tally: How was practice? Did he try anything?

Me: We practiced Academic Decathlon questions. That's it.

Tally: That's ALL? No weird vibes? No suspicious behavior?

Me: He was actually really helpful. We're good partners.

Tally: I'm watching him. One wrong move and I'm intervening.

I smile despite myself. Tally's protectiveness is sometimes overwhelming, but it comes from love.

Me: Noted. See you tomorrow.

I pack up my things and head out of the classroom, down the hallway toward the exit where I'll catch the 5:15 bus home.

I'm halfway down the stairs when I nearly collide with someone coming up.

Valentina.

"Mara! Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going." She steadies herself on the railing, that practiced smile in place. "Late afternoon study session?"

"Academic Decathlon practice."

"Oh, right. I heard Coach partnered you with Enzo Tavares." Her smile sharpens slightly. "That must be interesting."

"It's productive. We work well together."

"I'm sure you do." She adjusts her designer bag on her shoulder. "It's smart, actually. Getting close to the legacy students. Good strategy for a scholarship student trying to network."

The implication lands like a slap.

"I'm not—" I stop myself. Defending against Valentina's insinuations is exactly what she wants. It makes me look defensive, insecure, like she's hit a nerve.

"I'm partnered with him because Coach assigned it," I say evenly. "Nothing more complicated than that."

"Of course." Valentina starts past me, then pauses. "Just be careful, Mara. Boys like Enzo—legacy boys from families like his—they have expectations about who they end up with. And it's not usually girls who—" She gestures vaguely at me. "Well. You know."

She continues up the stairs before I can respond, leaving me standing there with her words echoing in my head.

Girls who—

Girls who what? Girls on scholarship? Girls who take the bus? Girls whose mothers work two jobs and whose uncles get arrested over broken taillights?

Girls like me.

I shove the thought away and continue down the stairs, out of the building, toward the bus stop.

Valentina doesn't get to define what I am or what I'm capable of. Neither does anyone else at this school.

I earned my place at Westbridge. I earned my presentation success. And if Enzo Tavares wants to be study partners for Academic Decathlon, that doesn't mean anything except that we're both smart enough to recognize that working together makes us stronger.

That's all this is. Strategic partnership. Academic collaboration. Nothing personal.

The bus pulls up and I climb on, finding a seat near the back.

I pull out my phone and look at my message thread with Enzo. Our conversation about Saturday, about the museum, about studying together.

Nothing personal, I tell myself firmly.

But when I close my eyes, I can still see the way the afternoon light caught in his hair. The way he smiled when he said he liked working together better than competing.

The way my name sounded in his voice.

I open my eyes and stare out the window as the bus pulls away from Westbridge, carrying me back toward my real life, my real world, the place where I don't have to think about green-hazel eyes and unexpected kindness and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, my academic rival is becoming something else entirely.

Something dangerous.

Something I definitely shouldn't want.

But might be starting to want anyway.